GPL & Blender Adoption in Games Industry

General Forums Blender and CG Discussions
61

GPL might not be only factor preventing critical mass, but its certainly one we have to consider as a contributor. The other part is how Blender is design and presents itself. If Blender was created in such a way, through intentional design, where proprietary software can easily plug in and work with Blender without worry of GPL issues, then it would be a difference story. From the get go, Blender seems to be more inward facing rather than outward. One has to consider what makes other primary applications attract such a wide range of impressive plugins and third party software… Groboto was dropped so that the developers could focus on a plugin called MeshFusion instead, 3DS Max has a massive library of impressive and even costly 3rd party plugins. If blender can be the core and everything else can safely be integrated into it, it wouldnt be an issue but it is…so the question is why?

On the other hand, Blender needs to send the right messages as well. It hasnt been doing a very good job at that… what hey Valve is contacting us, ok lets play coy and make them continue to come to us. The fact that Valve opened the door for communication and integration, and yet the BF seems to show very little interest in capitalizing on that speaks volumes. Saying things like autodesk users can walk right on past Blender wont build any bridges. Actively opposing conventions in 3d will build a bigger wall between the plug-in creators and the core developers. Its all about optics in this case and the optics of where Blender stands, what their interest is, does more to push people away and create biases rather than pull them in and make them feel at home. Its a good talk to have about how to “change the face” of Blender… in terms of public perception and internal perception. This isnt to say I dont think theres progress being made on that front.

62

Why do we need blender to be open source for that at all? Is having an open core important in this case?

On the other hand, Blender needs to send the right messages as well. It hasnt been doing a very good job at that… what hey Valve is contacting us, ok lets play coy and make them continue to come to us. The fact that Valve opened the door for communication and integration, and yet the BF seems to show very little interest in capitalizing on that speaks volumes. Saying things like autodesk users can walk right on past Blender wont build any bridges. Actively opposing conventions in 3d will build a bigger wall between the plug-in creators and the core developers. Its all about optics in this case and the optics of where Blender stands, what their interest is, does more to push people away and create biases rather than pull them in and make them feel at home. Its a good talk to have about how to “change the face” of Blender… in terms of public perception and internal perception. This isnt to say I dont think theres progress being made on that front.

The only public communication I’ve seen has been regarding distributing Blender via Steam. I’m not aware of talk about “integration” that goes beyond that. I guess it hasn’t beend a priority because downloading blender isn’t especially hard.
In case of Valve specifically the fact that blender doesn’t make proprietary plugins easy is not the problem. If they wanted Blender to be a part of their pipeline (or the one they suggest for their community) they could build the missing pieces right into blender, I don’t think they have issues writing open source.
If they want modeling tools in their filmmaker software it’s way easier to write their own code than to fiddle with 3rd party applications. A lot of game engines and such have tools like that built in. They might not be the most advanced but it’s convenient to have. The only thing blender can do here is better export/import (you can’t really say that the fbx situation is blender’s fault).

As for building walls and creating biases, that’s just hypothetical.

63

There is no point in that. The application either sucks or doesn’t. I think this discussion about GPL or other type of licenses is pointless. It only matters when thinking of development and problems with GPL (it’s always GPL, no other license in this entire galaxy brings problems). People often wonder (at least open source believers) why some programs are more popular than others. It’s because they are better.

64

People often wonder (at least open source believers) why some programs are more popular than others. It’s because they are better.

I know, right? I keep saying this about countries, but everyone calls me nationalist.

66

“This is unique functionality that I can’t really find elsewhere.”

Uhh… what? Every other 3D package I know of has either Python or another scripting language, often with much more access/options than Blender has. Many even have a nice C/C++ API as well, allowing fast, deep integration with things like VRay, Realflow, FumeFX, and others. This goes for tight integration with external game engines as well. Python in Blender will let you do simple exports and imports of supported information, but if you’re at all concerned about speed, and if you’re a commercial company interested in recouping your investment by selling your Blender integration, it’s more or less a non-starter at the moment.

68

Passion is good so long as it doesn’t get personal. :slight_smile:

Agree & disagree, mostly because I think you’ve introduced a different tangent here.

I agree, Blender doesn’t have the leverage or inside track required to have studios (with lots of money) pay the salaries of Blender developers, at least not for more than a short contract. Honestly I think this has a lot to do with “vision” trumping practicality and some to do with the GPL. I’ll explain.

Let’s say, for argument’s sake, someone like Christopher Nolan took a shining to Blender and decided one of the Batman films was to use it. The VFX studios he has on shortlist use Maya, 3D Studio, and others… but they’re willing to say they’ll include Blender in their pipeline order to get the job. Oh, but 3DS/Maya users may as well just walk on by according to project lead. Blender is for Blender users and, yeah, we like our RMB select just the way it is thanks. Oh, and those proprietary plugins you use all the time for your shots - even if you were willing & able to code up a native interface for them, you can’t without violating the GPL. No, we’re not particularly interested in pursuing a change to that either.

It’s not just that Blender doesn’t have leverage and/or inside track - it’s a combination of knowing better than the industry the tool is supposed to work in AND the legal issues of others giving it a reasonable foot in the door. I know more artists using Wings for box modelling as part of a professional pipeline than I do people who use Blender for the same. It isn’t just a matter of exposure.

Seriously? It would be hard to name a major 3D content creation application without strong scripting support (most of them using Python!).

It doesn’t. I use it for the same.

It does, however, make it legally & developmentally difficult to use existing proprietary import/export SDK’s like FBX. It makes it flat out impossible to integrate proprietary plugins/addons as used in most professional movie making pipelines. Ironically, the Blender Foundation/Institute is focused on film making and tools for that, so it’s not like they can dismiss it as a focus issue.

Yeah, you’ll have to blame a mod for that. My post might be the first one in the thread, but it was in response to a different subject in different thread. The mods split it out and gave it a spin that I had not intended at all.

69

While sometimes this is true, there are many proprietary program for which one can really not claim this. I don’t think anyone can seriously claim that Windows is a more popular OS than Linux or Mac because it is better.

70

I can! While its true Windows became popular for a variety of reasons, one of the main ones is that it was better OS overall and more open for both software developers and hardware developers. Ironically Apple and its OS would probably be dead by now if Microsoft didnt bail them out and Steve Jobs didnt come back after the fact. Kind of funny how that works. Anyways I digress…

But I agree with the premise you are trying to make, better is not the sole reason something is popular. Its never just that simple.

71

As an user I see more disavantages than advantages about the Blender license.
The gpl issue it’s not related only to game development,but in every 3d field.
To be honest Blender is so good that,with the possibility to have some real plugins,it could be a really a great 3d suite(really not much different than other more “famous” applications),without simply it misses some tool that at end you need to finish the work.
Personally I think that if the Blender Market will succeed,the situation will be even worse.
WIth a commercial application you buy the software,and the plugins you need for your work,but a lot of small script are free.
WIth Blender,we don’t buy the software,we can’t buy plugins(nobody will send them),but we are starting to sell small scripts.
It’s a bit odd at least.

72

Ah that explains it… i read all this thread so far with a bemused “what is this all about” feeling…

especially when you mentioned earlier that this isn’t about the merits of the gpl or not…

On games:
GPL blender used with external game engines like unity or unreal or whatever = no problem. it just isn’t a factor
making it fine for small indy studios or larger ones that aren’t worried about hiring/training a workforce how to use blender…

GPL BGE = big turnoff for potential developers hoping for commercial success… giving teh source code away… how damaging is that really? end users mostly won’t be able to make good use of it and the majority of the code will be blender code anyway… is it actually a problem that commercial developers don’t use the bge? is it harming anything?

on third party plugins and integration… most things work fine not in teh same process… the big exception would be render engines integration via api calls rather than intermediate data files… this is a problem for film makers (how big just depends on your POV… ) but doesn’t matter one jot in video games…

a lot of gpl audio software used to have teh same issue as blender and the fbx sdk EULA with Steinberg and VST… it required end users to download the sdk themselves and compile the software themselves…

any games company that finds the idea of compiling blender for themselves a turnoff probably doesn’t deserve to be in business…

Question:
a third party plug in or render engine cannot make calls into blender apis without becoming “infected” by the gpl… so blender having an sdk /plug in system probably makes no diference…

can blender make calls to a closed source plugin/render engine? as long as it’s distirbuted seperately?.. for example vray or renderman?
the source code that links to the external engine could be open source and freely available… but blender isn’t distributed with the target, end users have to aquire and install that themselves…

finally, blender being GPL is a good thing. I’ve written several addons for blender and made them gpl and shared them with teh community… and it’s a large part of the point of blender… free(as in beer) doesn’t make blender good, free (as in gpl) has made it what it is today…

73

GPL BGE = big turnoff for potential developers hoping for commercial success… giving teh source code away… how damaging is that really?

Given that your opponent could simply grab your game, replace the graphics, and sell it under his name, a lot i would say. He saves most of the work of coding the game. This saves manyears of developers costs. And a manyear is an expensive investigation.

Even better, your opponent could have a look how a game works at the market before he grabs it. Means he lowers his risk by grabbing just the succesful games.

This is of course just a theoretical debate since BGE isn’t really on par with tools like Unity or Unreal anymore. And nearly all BGE games are made by hobbyists.

For plugins things are a bit different though. Here it’s a real danger that an opponent grabs the whole plugin, and sells it under his name. For a business man a win win situation. No development costs. Just grab it once, then redistribute it and earn the money.

For me it’s just a question of time until plugins from the Blender market gets redistributed by somebody else. Just let it grow big enough that redistributing this plugins becomes profitable.

free(as in beer) doesn’t make blender good, free (as in gpl) has made it what it is today…

Which could be so much more without the GPL license restrictions. GPL affects the whole infra structure. Without GPL we would see much more commercial plugins for Blender. GPL is what keeps Blender in the hobby corner.

Being GPL is both for Blender, a godsend and a curse.

74

Quite, it’s just not that big a deal… when I worked at sony one of the devs was saying how he could drop a memory stick on oxford street (the busiest street in london) with all the source code for their in house tech and r and d and even if a rival company coder found it it mostly would make no difference as you’d still need to have very specific knowledge to make head nor tail of it…
and besides that content is king… most games are ripped off mercilessly from each other anyway… how many endless runners, match 3 or flappy bird clones can teh world take?
having access to teh source doesn’t mean much.

“just” replacing all teh graphical content in a game is as much work as making a game from scratch most of the time anyway… even more so if the game is level based and needs level design/tuning…

For plugins things are a bit different though. Here it’s a real danger that an opponent grabs the whole plugin, and sells it under his name. For a business man a win win situation. No development costs. Just grab it once, then redistribute it and earn the money.

For me it’s just a question of time until plugins from the Blender market gets redistributed by somebody else. Just let it grow big enough that redistributing this plugins becomes profitable.

Not that blender can realistically be changed from GPL…

I have developed lots of addons for blender and have freely distributed them because I have blender and have built on it and think that it’s important to share and give back… lots of contributors think this way… so blender wouldn’t have that without GPL.

Now, I don’t mind if others charge for their work or not but they do know going in that because of the GPL their work will have to be GPL too… so they know that payment for their work is reliant on trust and honour.

Which could be so much more without the GPL license restrictions. GPL affects the whole infra structure. Without GPL we would see much more commercial plugins for Blender. GPL is what keeps Blender in the hobby corner.

without GPL the blender project would have died years and years ago… it would be stillborn

Being GPL is both for Blender, a godsend and a curse.

maybe but it is what it is… much third party software is admirably catered for using addons for IO… (3d coat, after effects, so not a problem.

render engines are problematic because data IO is a bottleneck and they are increasingly integrated in other apps using api calls rather than file IO…

but Vray is a shining example… an opensource blender integration (that is only useful to blender users so not a problem for chaos group)
with a fast export pipeline rather than python export…

Matt Ebbs 3delight addon was amazing… a shame he got too busy to keep up development work… but slow IO was an issue…

the point I’m making is that commercial render engines “work around” the gpl by being separate entities and using file IO.
what makes this un-attaractive is speed… speed is bottlenecked by using python…

Vray has a custom version of blender to accelerate IO to their engine using C now if blender could accelerate IO out the box so that third parties didn’t have to roll there own… and make it easier for 3rd parties to leverage this you might get more interest from commercial development.

I think it’s not so much GPL that’s the problem here but rather that the blender user base is a small market to start with and as a demographic is mostly tight with cash and used to getting stuff for free…

iIt’s promising that there was a quote on here that ton found the current situation with third party render engines ridiculous and I’m sure that a lot could be cleared up with teh render api blender side to make it easier and more attractive (low cost) for third parties to offer blender support…

there are lots of open standards that are increasingly becoming teh goto solution for commercial companies (alembic, open subdiv, OSL etc)
supporting those keeps blender relevant and doesn’t cause gpl issues…

so really the only type of plugin developer we are discouraging are those that do smaller utilities … like biped for max, face robot, particle systems, hair plugins etc etc… it would be nice for commercial companies to be able to step in for these types of things whilst the dev pace is sometimes slow in teh open source world but at least because that isn’t an option it means that solutions made available will be for everyone…

75

Having the ability for commercial plugins doesn’t mean it will happen or be successful.
Gimp made special effort to allow non GPL extensions,

http://gimp.1065349.n5.nabble.com/are-there-commercial-plugins-for-GIMP-td32158.html

  • old posts but as as far as I can tell the situation hasn’t changed.

By comparison WordPress is GPL and has an active extension community, even selling themes and support.

Of course these aren’t exact equivalents, but the point is bypassing GPL doesn’t ensure thriving commercial plugin ecosystem, and sticking with GPL doesn’t necessarily prevent it.

76

One must concede, though, that there is a certain number of people who won’t use Blender until it has certain capabilities usually provided by large-scale plugins, and there are certain large-scale plugin developers who either won’t develop if their code needs to be GPL licensed or can’t get the performance they feel they need out of the existing Python API or both. I think eventually (if not already) Blender will reach an equilibrium where potential users won’t hop on board if Blender continues to be the weak link in the pipeline (and Blender WILL eventually need to become more friendly towards being part of an external pipeline) due to lack of available tools or perceived view that these will never be developed for one reason or another, and where potential developers won’t develop because those users aren’t on board. At that point it will become necessary to decide how this problem should best be tackled.

I personally would love to see Blender adopted more widely by my peers, but there is a lot of hesitation, and at this point it’s not because of the same reasons as it was even 5 or 7 years ago when it was very hard to recommend to others. The main reason I hear from professionals familiar with Blender development is no longer “the UI” or “the performance”; now the biggest gripe is the lack of simple integration with external renderers, the lack of external tools, and the difficulty of using Blender in a larger pipeline. FBX and Alembic support will be big points to check off of that list, but the problem is embedded quite a bit deeper than that, IMO.

77

@Michael W:
[SUB](Sorry mate, you just make interesting points to respond to!)[/SUB]

On using Blender for game assets, levels, etc - I am 100% with you. Blender is a tool with a license that doesn’t affect the artistic products created with it. Also, I’m sympathetic to the view that game developers should be able to make small patches &/or compile plugins/add-ons themselves. That said, I don’t think there is any argument being made that the GPL affects these guys too much.

The “GPL restriction on plugins” issue kicks in when people cannot reasonably be expected to compile their own plugins. Some small game studios might fall into this category but I would posit a vast majority of graphics studios (film, animation, or otherwise) also fall into this realm. Large studios often rely on one or two tech-savvy folks for managing their network rendering, plugin setup, etc… and in my experience the one’s with decent programming skills tend to leave for greener pastures (better pay, conditions, & less stress).

No more so than professional studios not wanting to use Blender. One assumes, however, that most BGE developers want their software to be used as more than a playground for amateurs & hobbyists before they get serious and move onto something else. I mean, if the aim of the BGE is to remain a learning playground without much in the way of professional appeal, then sure - no harm, no foul.

Bingo, you have pretty much summed up the approach I have outlined (in multiple threads now) for how Blender can get commercial plugins. To be 100% clear - yes. Provided the API to which the plugin/render engine is coded is not GPL, the plugin/render engine will not be “infected” (as you put it) by said copyleft license. Provided the license to that API is GPL compatible the Blender application can be written to load arbitrary plugins/render engines implementing the interface without violating the GPL.

The key here is that the API needs to be generic (i.e. being specific to Blender only would make it a “derivative” of the GPL code and therefore need to be GPL), the API needs to be released under a more open license than GPL (such that it complies with both the GPL & proprietary licenses… so BSD, MIT, maybe Apache), and there needs to be approval/buy-in from BF/Ton on the matter (because without it, the long-term feasibility of the plugin/render engine interface is shot).

Not an argument I can make either way really. Blender was, initially, not a GPL application. It managed to get $100K to be released under the GPL (with the Blender Foundation holding dual license capability), and I have a strong feeling that the vast majority of the donators weren’t doing it for the “free software cause”. I think Blender could have succeeded without the GPL much like Firefox, Apache, etc… especially given the fact that it isn’t (and hasn’t been) at the bleeding edge of much that competitors would want to steal but couldn’t due to the GPL. Look at LSCM - the GPL in no way prevented other software from implementing the same thing, likely having examined how Blender had done so.

78

Speed it’s not a small issue.
It’s one of the most important feature for a render(with quality and scalability).
Honestly using a renderer with data exported using a script language is an hobbyst approach(or a student approach),it can work only for small scene for people interested in learning a renderer.
Btw I agree that vray it’s a nice example of a great integration.

These is true,but if the standards it’s not open but closed like fbx?
We have seen how difficult could be having a good io for closed standards.

I wouldn’t say these plugins are small utilities,really,small utililities are the addons we currently have in the community.

79

when I worked at sony one of the devs was saying how he could drop a memory stick on oxford street (the busiest street in london) with all the source code for their in house tech and r and d and even if a rival company coder found it it mostly would make no difference as you’d still need to have very specific knowledge to make head nor tail of it…

But he didn’t drop the memory stick then. Nor did he leak any other commercial written code into public without permission. Because this code had and has a value. Code is knowledge and manyears. It is copyrighted for good reason. Code has usually a this big value that even free software puts their code under a license so that nobody else can steal / misuse it.

It’s of course true that it needs time to read yourself into foreign code. But stealing code is common practice out there.

80

Actually at first OpenSubdiv DID cause issues with the GPL. The only reason we can have it now is because Disney/Pixar were nice enough to make a special exception just for Blender. If they hadn’t cared we would never be able to have it despite it even being open source.

81

Game developers seem to worry far too much that their “loving brainchild” is … of course … so incredible that people would go to all lengths to steal it. (Since they never could possibly, uhhhh, say, “blow it away in the marketplace,” instead?)

And, well, it just bears repeating: Blender would not exist without GPL, and it would never have advanced as far and as fast as it continues to do, without GPL. None of the things that we are talking about today would exist. (Nor, quite possibly, would the web-site that we’re using, around the planet, to do so.)

In a tremendous number of ways, GPL has turned out to be an “enabling process” which brought us all sorts of things that we could never have otherwise developed, and that today we could never live without: Apache, MySQL, Linux(!), Android(!), OS/X and iOS (Darwin). Blender. And people do “somehow find a way” to successfully incorporate them into their commercial efforts “without starting over from scratch.”

So … it really can be done. It is being done already.

82

Not that i want to open another barrel here. But i wouldn’t call 1% of the desktop market a huge success for Linux. Looking at the resources they have it’s more an example that good meant is not always good made. They had their chances, and they clearly missed it. I see Blender in a partial similar situation.

The areas where you can see GPL software succeeds is the areas where very big commercial companies stands behind and pushes it in specific directions. With money and own programmers. MySQL is Oracle for example. Android is Google. OS X and iOS is Apple. And so on. It is business driven. And the market forces steers the directions.

Game developers seem to worry far too much that their “loving brainchild” is … of course … so incredible that people would go to all lengths to steal it. (Since they never could possibly, uhhhh, say, “blow it away in the marketplace,” instead?)

The game market is of course flooded. So every newcomer has a hard time nowadays. But we shouldn’t mix ideas with code and invested work here. Ideas are indeed a dime a dozen. But when i invest a year of serious code work, then i don’t want my opponent to grab this work for free and without own work. And even stealing my revenue with it afterwards because he fishes in the same area. That’s bad for business.